‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’ exposes Indian liberals’ biggest blind spot

That was it.

For a film whose delayed release had sparked weeks of online outrage, debates over censorship, and countless demands that India let audiences decide for themselves, the audience, when finally given that chance, barely showed up.

In fairness, watching The Voice of Hind Rajab in a theatre isn’t radically different from watching it on an OTT platform. There are no sweeping battle sequences demanding the biggest screen possible, no breathtaking cinematography that loses its magic on a laptop. The film unfolds largely through the terrified voice of a six-year-old girl trapped inside a car with her dead family members. It is her cries—not the visuals—that stay with you.

But that’s precisely why the empty theatre felt significant.

People weren’t being asked to experience cinema in its grandest form. They were simply being asked to show up.

For months, the film had become a symbol. People argued that India deserved the freedom to watch it, criticised the CBFC for delaying its release, and insisted that uncomfortable stories shouldn’t be kept from audiences. Yet when the uncomfortable story finally arrived, the urgency seemed to evaporate. The movement powered by Indian liberals lost its momentum as soon as we were asked to buy a Rs 199 ticket.

The liberal attendance problem

The Voice of Hind Rajab isn’t an isolated case. If anything, it is becoming part of a worrying pattern.

Take Homebound. After its international acclaim and Oscar buzz, the film was hailed online as the kind of cinema India needed more of. Social media timelines celebrated its ambition, its storytelling and the fact that it had found global recognition. Yet when it finally reached Indian theatres, the applause rarely translated into occupied seats. It quietly faded from cinemas, becoming another critically celebrated film that audiences claimed to love without actually paying to watch.

This, perhaps, is the liberal attendance problem.

In India, we have become exceptionally good at signalling our politics. We know how to trend hashtags, amplify campaigns, and demand that films be released. We celebrate independent cinema when it wins abroad and complain that Bollywood keeps rewarding formulaic comedies with endless sequels. Every time another Housefull or Masti franchise film succeeds, our timelines are flooded with laments about the death of meaningful cinema.

Yet when meaningful cinema finally arrives, many of us are nowhere to be found.

Showing up, it turns out, is much harder than posting.

Perhaps it is because we have borrowed the language of liberal politics from the West without fully embracing its culture of participation. Supporting a cause isn’t just about agreeing with it; it’s about giving it your time, your money, and your presence. Buying a ticket for a film you spent weeks defending online is one such act. Filling an auditorium in a city like Delhi—where audiences have the greatest access to alternative cinema—shouldn’t be an impossible ask.

Because if we don’t show up for the stories we insist deserve to be told, we can hardly complain when producers decide those stories aren’t worth financing anymore.

The modern liberal playbook: fluent in the language of activism, but not always in the practice of showing up.

The Indian liberal playbook

If The Voice of Hind Rajab exposed one crack in India’s liberal ecosystem, it isn’t the only one.

Look at the Cockroach Janta Party movement. Its Instagram page today boasts more than 22 million followers—a staggering number by any measure. Yet when the movement held its first protest at Jantar Mantar, only a few thousand people turned up. The gap between online support and physical participation was impossible to ignore.

This has become the classic Indian liberal playbook. In fact, the contemporary Indian liberal has become remarkably good at curating a political identity.

For the new-and-improved variant of an Indian liberal, the bookshelf is stocked with the right authors. The Instagram stories amplify the right causes. The petitions are signed. The documentaries are watched. The outrage is articulate, informed and, more often than not, genuine.

We speak passionately about supporting independent artists, better storytelling and uncomfortable truths.

But when those very artists ask us for something tangible—a movie ticket, a seat in an auditorium, a few hours at a protest, our physical presence—the enthusiasm often dissipates.

Showing up has become our biggest ideological blind spot.

Perhaps that is because we have borrowed the language of liberal politics more easily than its practice. Across many democracies, activism has traditionally relied on people giving not just their opinions but also their time, money, and bodies to a cause. In India, social media has made it possible to feel politically engaged without ever leaving the comfort of our algorithms.

The result is a peculiar contradiction. We are incredibly good at creating momentum, but not always at sustaining it. We can make a cause trend. We struggle to make it count.

And if audiences don’t show up for the films they champion, or citizens don’t show up for the movements they amplify, then the algorithm has won over the auditorium—and the feed has won over the street.